Commission warns Greece over lack of consensus

The European Commission has said that comments made by Antonis Samaras (pictured) – expected to be Greece’s next prime minister – that austerity measures should be renegotiated should not derail the country’s bail-out.

Samaras, the leader of the New Democracy party, voted in favour of tough new austerity measures in Greece’s parliament yesterday, but made it clear that they should be looked at again after April’s general election.

Finance ministers from eurozone member states have demanded that leaders of all Greece’s main political parties sign up to a pledge to stick by the austerity measures, which are a condition of the €130 billion bail-out from the eurozone and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

A spokesman for Olli Rehn, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, today refused to be drawn on Samaras’s comments but said that Samaras had “endorsed” the bail-out conditions by voting in favour.

He said: “Mr Samaras and most of the members of his political party voted in favour of the second programme for Greece [yesterday].

“They did that before parliament and before the Greek citizens. Therefore the Greek citizens know that this programme has been endorsed by Mr Samaras and by New Democracy.”

However, he said that eurozone finance ministers had demanded a “clear and unequivocal commitment” by the political parties to adhere to the austerity measures before embarking on the campaign for the general election.

When asked about Samaras’s comments, Rehn said: “For Greece, for the Greek people, it is much better to show the necessary political determination in order to ensure that the programme can be implemented and implemented in a way to reduce the debt burden for Greece and facilitate the country’s return to sustainable growth and better employment.”

Rehn added that yesterday’s vote in the Greek parliament was a”crucial step” towards adoption of the programme and that he was confident that other measures that are a condition of the bail-out, including the identification of another €325 million in savings, would be completed by the time of the next meeting of eurozone finance ministers, on Wednesday night (15 February).

Rehn welcomed the vote in Greece’s parliament, which he said would “put an end to the spiral of unsustainable public finances”, and condemned the violence on the streets of Athens carried out by people protesting about the situation.

A default by Greece and a subsequent exit from the euro would be “devastating”, Rehn said, not just for Greece but for the “knock-on effect” it would have on the entire eurozone.